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I.F. Stone famously said, “All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.” The aphorism applies well to nuclear reactor operators, including Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has granted Xcel a second license extension for operating its 54-year-old Monticello reactor on the Mississippi River in Minnesota. The decision will permit this GE jalopy, a Fukushima clone, to run until it’s 80 years old — a dangerous feat never been done in the history of nuclear power. The NRC received over 3,000 public comments mostly critical of the extension, but the the commission has rubber stamped 87 of 92 [1] similar requests, so call the NRC Never Really Concerned.
The NRC nod is based partly on the commission’s Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) [2] for the re-licensing, even though the document confirms that Xcel repeatedly made false statements about its massive 2022-‘23 leak of radioactive cooling water. According to a March 16, 2023 Associated Press (AP) story, [3] Xcel’s first public response to the major leak was, “There’s no danger to the public.” Xcel then proceeded to understate by more than half the leak’s actual volume, only estimating it was 400,000 gallons.
Xcel eventually acknowledged that volume of the leak, from an old corroded underground pipe, was 829,000 gallons, and that the groundwater plume of reactor cooling water — some of which would later reach the Mississippi River — had a radioactive footprint of some fourteen curies of tritium [4] — a very large amount. (For a reference, the 1979 partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island released an estimated 15 curies of gaseous radioactive iodine-131 to the Pennsylvania atmosphere. Other radioactive materials went into the Susquehanna River.)
Xcel’s 829,000-gallon leak was always a direct threat to drinking water because — as the company’s own 2023 Annual Radioactive Effluent Release Report states on page 13 [4] — “It is assumed groundwater continuously flows to the river…” The Mississippi is the drinking water source for 20 million people, including Minneapolis, St. Paul and their surrounding suburbs 37 miles downstream from the leaky reactor.
The fact that Xcel’s radioactive groundwater plume would automatically move toward the Mississippi meant the leak posed a gargantuan PR problem. Lying about it was Xcel’s and the NRC’s first action. One NRC spokesperson, Victoria Mitlyng, told WCCO TV News, March 17, 2023, [5]“There is no pathway for the tritium to get into drinking water.”
This mis-step was so blatant that NRC Senior Environmental Project Manager Stephen S. Koenick publicly apologized [6] for the fudge, at an NRC open meeting in the city of Monticello, May 15, 2024. Koenick told the gathering, “I know we had meetings in which we reported there were no indication[s] of tritium leak making it to the Mississippi. However, in our Draft Environmental Impact Statement, we do say, we do conclude there were some very low concentrations of tritium in the Mississippi River.”
Curies and picocuries: code language helps to confuse
When these radioactive accidents take place, PR language is employed by the industry to confuse, befog, and try to trivialize their size, scope, and potential health and environmental effects. Xcel reported to the NRC Dec. 15, 2022 that its leaked cooling water contained 5,020,000 “picocuries of radioactive tritium per liter,” sometimes written as “picocuries/liter.” This concentration is 251 times the EPA’s allowable limit for drinking water.
A picocurie is one-trillionth of a curie. Anything in the world divisible by one trillion is naturally very large, and a curie is a very large cache of radioactivity indeed. One curie amounts to 37 billion atomic disintegrations per-second.
The NRC’s final EIS states on page 3-48 [8] says, “Monticello reported an abnormal discharge to the Mississippi River from tritium contaminated groundwater of 0.167 curies of tritium between 07/27/23 and 12/31/23….”
The figure “0.167 curies” may give the impression of a small amount, but this amount of tritium contamination already in the Mississippi translates to 167 billion picocuries. Again, 20,000 picocuries-per liter is the current EPA allowable drinking water limit.
Over seven million gallons of groundwater has been pumped from Xcel’s onsite wells [7] to try and keep more tritium from reaching the Mississippi. The final EIS says about this pollution at page 3-206 [9] “For the period from January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2023, a total of 0.388 Ci [curies] of tritium (released via natural evaporation from the temporary tanks and the groundwater remediation pond) was reported during calendar year 2023.” This is to say 388 billion picocuries of tritium were sent floating around Minnesota’s Wright and Sherburne Counties. This under-reported and unplanned, emergency stop-gap response poses some risk for the surrounding residents who breath.
Xcel’s estimated leak of 14 curies of tritium will contaminate the moving groundwater for a very long time. Its radioactive half-life is 12.3 years, so the tritium will persist for about 12 decades while it decays (to helium-3). Once tritium contaminates water, it is impossibly expensive to remove. A new textbook on tritium reports, “its half-life is short enough that it is extremely radioactive. For a given mass, it is, for instance, about 150,000 times as radioactive, in terms of disintegrations per unit time, as plutonium-239. One teaspoon of tritiated water would contaminate about 100 billion gallons of water to the U.S. drinking water limit.”[10]
Alarmingly, when tritium is internalized (ingested or inhaled) it can result in problem pregnancies, miscarriages, and birth abnormalities because this machine-made radioactive poison crosses the placenta where it threatens the fetus. Yet the NRC has neither imposed a penalty nor even issued a rebuke to Xcel for its enormous leak or for its public lying that still paints a false picture of its consequences.
Xcel’s home website seen Jan. 8, 2025 still includes the uncorrected notice of March 16, 2023 that claims, “Xcel Energy took swift action to contain the leak to the plant site, which poses no health and safety risk to the local community or the environment,” and in the next paragraph it still says, “the leaked water is fully contained on-site and has not been detected beyond the facility”. Of course, Xcel knows that nothing “contains” groundwater which is constantly moving willy nilly. This company’s public pronouncements must not be believed.
The Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Mississippi River, made up of regional environmental, climate, and justice groups has vowed to see the reactor closed before the achey, breaky unit causes a more catastrophic radiation release.
Notes
1.“Subsequent License Renewal: Extending Nuclear Power Reactors to 80 Years of Operation”, Power magazine, June 5, 2023, https://www.powermag.com/subsequent-license-renewal-extending-nuclear-power-reactors-to-80-years-of-operation-and-maybe-more/
2.Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Subsequent License Renewal, Monticello, Final Environmental Impact Statement, Nov. 15, 2024, p. 3-43, https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2430/ML24309A221.pdf
3.“400,000 gallons of radioactive water leaked from a nuclear plant in Minnesota,” by Steve Karnowski, March 16, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-xcel-energy-nuclear-radioactive-tritium-leak-c7a12ecb1b203179c5f7fef42bd0a3aa
4. Xcel “2023 Annual Radioactive Effluent Release Report”, https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2413/ML24135A191.pdf
5.“Regulators: Nuclear plant leak didn’t require public notice”, WCCO TV/CBS Minnesota, March 17, 2023
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/regulators-nuclear-plant-leak-didnt-require-public-notice/ “Mitlyng said there is no pathway for the tritium to get into drinking water.”
6. “NRC apologizes, changes its stance on tritium leak,” Monticello Times, June 6. 2024, p.1,
7. Xcel, “Groundwater recovery enters final phase at Xcel Energy’s Monticello plant”,
Updated estimates show total volume of water higher; Dec. 14, 2023, https://mn.my.xcelenergy.com/s/about/newsroom/press-release/groundwater-recovery-enters-final-phase-at-xcel-energy-s-monticello-plant-MCRTNOMXTBTNFYNLMVJD6GLPQXZQ
8. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Subsequent License Renewal, Monticello, Final Environmental Impact Statement, Nov. 15, 2024, p. 3-43, https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2430/ML24309A221.pdf
9. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Subsequent License Renewal, Monticello, Final Environmental Impact Statement, Nov. 15, 2024, p. 3-43, https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2430/ML24309A221.pdf
10. Arjun Makhijani, PhD, Exploring Tritium Dangers, IEER 2022, p. 5, https://ieer.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Exploring-Tritum-Dangers.pdf
11.Coalition Petition for a nuclear-free Mississippi river, https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/petition-for-a-nuclear-free-mississippi-river
